A Pre-easter Holiday In The Alps Skiing

On this Easter morning the church service in Gargellen, Austria, will be conducted by a stranger.

The old priest has died and the tiny village has to borrow one from elsewhere in the MontafonValley.

The town fathers are worried because they can't find a replacement. Last week one of them jokingly offered me the job, which has an appealing set of perks - free skiing for life and use of the hotel pool and sauna, next door to the onion-towered church. It would be okay to ski in blue jeans, instead of flowing black.

I was tempted to play Walter Mitty and daydream about different careers.

Hans Karl Rhomberg, owner of the Hotel Madrisa, smiled and suggested that, even though the Pope himself is a skier, the job in Gargellen requires more credentials than a philosophy and religion course at Lehigh many years ago.

Perhaps it would be easier to brush up on biology and be the village doctor instead. The 100 inhabitants get by without one, but when Gargellen swells to 1,000 skiers in residence, there is occasional demand for medical assistance.

Spontaneous foolishness, although made in the relaxed mood of apres ski, was an aberration of altitude. It was altitude that drew me back to the Montafon, even though there are hundreds of other ski resorts in the Alps for me yet to discover. Gargellen, with a base elevation almost a mile high, offered the assurance of snow in the waning moments of an uncertain winter. With snow that is skiable right to the hotel door, it was one of the last areas in the Silvretta range to lose its cover and, in fact, a foot of new snow fell during our visit.

The village was fully booked, largely by German families who had gotten an early start on the Easter holiday, some of them back for the 10th straight year. The skiers romped on the open snowfields at elevations nearly 8,000 feet high or sped through the fir trees on the lower parts of the mountains. The lift lines moved quickly and, once ensconced in the double chair, werose through the trees, past animal tracks and a deer-feeding station, to groomed slopes glistening in the snow.

Above the prepared pistes the new snow canceled our plan to ski around the Madrisa Horn on the tour down into Klosters on the Swiss side of the mountain. Long stretches of walking uphill would have been bad enough in snow tamped down by earlier skiers- . . . in the deep snow and high altitude it didn't seem to be worth the effort.

Instead we went over to Klosters by car. This fabled Swiss ski resort, often associated with writers and film stars, was the other major skiing stop on a 10-day junket that began and ended in Munich, Germany - that marvelous city where medieval meets modern and where old friendships are renewed over draught beer in an old Gasthaus.

My special friend and I had flown from Philadelphia to Munich with Lufthansa German airlines on a package deal that offered a free Avis car and the convenience and flexibility of moving at our own pace.

When we got to Klosters we did not ski the Swiss side of the Madrisa Horn. After the initial gondola ride to the top of the tree line, the slopes are laced with T-bars. My friend considers drag lifts an alpine, anti-American plot and shakes off suggestions that they are warmer, quicker and often more reliable than other conveyances. She was willing to wait for an hour in the corral of the Gotschnagrat cable car. Once at the top, she would have the option of other gondolas or the long chair servicing the intermediate Schwarzsee area.

Snow on the Parsenn was talcum and it remained so for three days of hatless skiing in brilliant sunshine that demanded glasses and Coppertone. Sunburn was a bigger danger than a spring avalanche.

Each day ended with the five-mile run back to the valley station of the Luftseilbahn in Klosters. Wedescended from the packed powder into corn and icy patches on the narrow trail in the woods. The last stretch in farmers' pastures was slush. When we got to the bottom, we were tired, pleased and grateful.

Other Klosters adventures were less strenuous and, therefore, less kind to our waistlines. Each day began with an elaborate buffet breakfast with juices, cereals, yogurt, assorted luncheon meats, rolls and croissants. Lunch was always eaten on the mountain, often with gulasch soup, sausage and beer. Dinner was always elegant.

One night we drove two miles out of Klosters to Monbiel, a tiny cluster of barns and houses, brown with the patina of age, where farmers drew water from a community spring. In the Hohwald restaurant a friendly group of local workers insisted we sample their Buendnerfleisch, thin slices of air-cured beef and a specialty of the Swiss canton of Graubuenden.

Our major experiences at the table were the elegant dinners at the Hotel Walserhof, where the owner-chef was proud of his nouvelle cuisine and the maitre d' insisted it be served with the flourishes of a French court.

For our beds and two meals in four-star hotels, the average rate was $50 per person per day.